I understand your concerns as I too have come from that way of thinking. Personally, I too have lost a lot of weight just changing what I eat: lost 5 lbs from cutting back from six burgers a week to one per month and lost another 10 lbs from removing junk food entirely and just consuming fruits, vegetables, low carbs, and meat (turkey and chicken). I know it works to a point. However, this was addressed in the second half of the first post. I'll quote it here:

Quote:

Fasting is "to abstain from all food". Most of us do short-term fasting while we sleep (aka we don't eat when we're sleeping). Long term fasting has been seen as counter-productive in terms of weight loss; our bodies are very efficient at storing energy (ie fat) and, if the body anticipates a shortage of energy intake, it starts reducing sources of high-energy usage (ie muscles), which in turn lowers your metabolism and increases your fat retention.

Intermittent fasting seeks to find the optimum period of fasting and caloric consumption, which varies between different people and lifestyles. The idea, from what I understand, is to fast just long enough to the point before your body goes over the threshold and decides to retain more fat than muscle. For example, if your body had a consciousness:

Eating - "Yum. Energy."
Beginning of Fasting - "We have enough free energy to find more energy."
Middle of Fasting - "We've run out of free energy. Let's take some out of storage so that we can continue our search for energy."
End of Fasting - "More energy not found. Cease search."
Over-Fasting - "Muscles are stealing too much needed energy. Take them out."

... etc. A very simplified example. This doesn't take into account factors such as the muscle mass of the muscles you do not regularly use reducing in size even with an appropriate caloric intake.

Hi Kiro. I wanted to weigh in on this because I recently lost a lot of weight based on changing how I was eating. You really shouldn't be looking at fasting as your way to lose weight. It's not as healthy as you think. Here's the punch line of this joke: in the long run, if your body feels like it's not going to be getting calories, it will actually start to store fat longer to help you survive on fewer calories. In fact, you should eat within an hour of getting up, because the longer you wait, the more your metabolism slows down to (again) compensate for lack of calories.

Instead of eating less, eat different. Eat fewer carbs (but don't cut them out!) and more protein. Don't eat within a minimum of 2 hours before you go to bed, and try not to eat heavy (physically heavy, not necessarily calorie heavy) foods at dinner. Eat things high in fiber, because fiber helps your body break down food more easily and quickly. If you're trying to lose weight, the best thing you can do for yourself teach yourself good eating habits and not try to trick your body with some of these crazy weight loss techniques people do. Like I said, this comes from my own personal experience.

I used this awesome app my friend told me about, called LoseIt (the web interface is http://www.loseit.com) to assist with my own weight loss. It's very similar to Weight Watchers, except it's FREE and it counts pure calories instead of giving you points. I would highly recommend checking it out.

There are more studies being released that lean towards intermittent fasting having some pretty positive effects on health.

The "science" behind breakfast being the most important meal and your metabolism slowing down if you don't eat an hour after waking up is unfounded.

There are more studies being released that lean towards intermittent fasting having some pretty positive effects on health.

The "science" behind breakfast being the most important meal and your metabolism slowing down if you don't eat an hour after waking up is unfounded.

You know, I'm not here to start an argument about where the science lies. I'm merely suggesting that making lifestyle changes about how you eat might be more beneficial in the long run that a "lose weight quickly/easily" dieting effort. The latter may get you there, but the former helps to ensure you don't go back. Let's face it, people don't suddenly get fat overnight. There are some aspect of their lifestyle that contributes. It's always going to be better to pick up healthy habits than to have spurts of healthy choices.

The "science" isn't saying that the pounds will start to pile on if you don't eat breakfast. Rather instead it says that it helps to get your metabolism working bright and early so you don't waste time. If you wait 5 hours to have your first something to eat, then that's when your metabolism finally starts really working for the day. These things are proven body functions, not "unfounded" claims.

The biggest problem with not eating breakfast isn't so much the fact that your metabolism slows down, but that people respond to it by binge eating often unhealthy foods because they tend to be readily available to satisfy their hunger. Yes, fat retention is encouraged, but if low fat foods are consumed, then there's little reason to worry about increasing fat storage.

What's interesting about intermittent fasting is that some research says that the last part does not apply:

One area of current research into diet is Alternate Day fasting (ADF), involving eating what you want one day, then a very restricted diet (fewer than 600 calories) the next, and most surprisingly, it does not seem to matter that much what you eat on non-fast days.

The only real argument that the breakfast crowd have is insulin sensitivity. In very basic terms, the more sensitive your body is to insulin, the more likely you are to lose fat and gain muscle. Increasing insulin sensitivity almost always leads to more efficient dieting.

Supporters of eating breakfast argue that since insulin sensitivity is higher in the morning, eating a carbohydrate-rich breakfast is going to have the greatest balance of taking in a large amount of energy without the danger of weight gain.

This brings us back to IF. You see, insulin sensitivity isn't higher in the morning; it's higher after the 8-to-10 hour fasting period that you experience when you sleep. More specifically, insulin sensitivity is higher when glycogen levels are depleted, and liver glycogen is somewhat depleted during your sleeping fast.

Intermittent fasting takes that a step further: It seems that extending the fasting period beyond that 8 to 10 hours by skipping breakfast (and, therefore, further depleting glycogen) will increase insulin even further.

Insulin sensitivity is also increased post exercise (due to further glycogen depletion in addition to other mechanisms), thus, in many cases IF proponents suggest compounding benefits by training in a fasted state and then having a carbohydrate-rich meal immediately following your workout.

Ultimately, this all means that there's nothing special about breakfast and that there's no need to eat first thing in the morning -- the first meal you eat to break your fast will be exposed to the benefits of increased insulin sensitivity.

I'm not going to get into the long term benefits of making healthier life choices since those are a given, but in terms of whats currently believed to be the long term effects of intermittent fasting, it ranges from cancer treatment/prevention, cognitive degeneration prevention, anti-aging, and general body repair. To my knowledge, none of these claims are backed by large-enough controlled human trials, but tests on animals have been encouraging.

All in all, I'm not here to prove anything. Just trying to introduce a topic that I found interesting and am trying it out for myself to see what it can do for me.

You know, I'm not here to start an argument about where the science lies. I'm merely suggesting that making lifestyle changes about how you eat might be more beneficial in the long run that a "lose weight quickly/easily" dieting effort. The latter may get you there, but the former helps to ensure you don't go back. Let's face it, people don't suddenly get fat overnight. There are some aspect of their lifestyle that contributes. It's always going to be better to pick up healthy habits than to have spurts of healthy choices.

Then again, people do enjoy the fact that their meals are big to satisfy their hunger because they pretty much skipped breakfast and all the calories that would have been eaten during breakfast is instead in lunch, or the fact that they feel much more satiety with 3 normal meals than 3 smaller meals that require snacking to fill in the hunger (o yea, that's what they call 6 meals)

Yes, doing this with "bad" food is not recommended, but that also applies to both sides of healthier eating.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LittleHobbit13

The "science" isn't saying that the pounds will start to pile on if you don't eat breakfast. Rather instead it says that it helps to get your metabolism working bright and early so you don't waste time. If you wait 5 hours to have your first something to eat, then that's when your metabolism finally starts really working for the day. These things are proven body functions, not "unfounded" claims.

I was going to write a similar reply based on one of my replies of going low-carb, but the reason that there is a metabolic boost in breakfast is only the thermal effect of food. When done properly, the metabolic boost from fasting is due to elevated leptin levels from the meal beforehand and the low insulin from the fast. In fact, last night's dinner becomes the most important meal with this approach.

You know, I'm not here to start an argument about where the science lies. I'm merely suggesting that making lifestyle changes about how you eat might be more beneficial in the long run that a "lose weight quickly/easily" dieting effort. The latter may get you there, but the former helps to ensure you don't go back. Let's face it, people don't suddenly get fat overnight. There are some aspect of their lifestyle that contributes. It's always going to be better to pick up healthy habits than to have spurts of healthy choices.

The "science" isn't saying that the pounds will start to pile on if you don't eat breakfast. Rather instead it says that it helps to get your metabolism working bright and early so you don't waste time. If you wait 5 hours to have your first something to eat, then that's when your metabolism finally starts really working for the day. These things are proven body functions, not "unfounded" claims.

Don't worry about starting an argument. When it comes to weight management, or just general health, I'm sure most of us would like to take the most efficient route. In the end, it's whatever works for you. If you feel like you need food when you first wake up to maintain your sanity, then by all means do that.

But I have to ask, just where is the proof that your metabolism doesn't start working until you eat something? Why is there still a big debate about whether exercising in a fasted state is superior or not? For something to be a proven bodily function then there wouldn't be such a debate, I'd imagine.

The whole point of this journey for Kiro, as I interpret it, is to find out what works for him. He's questioning the different things he's heard and is considering alternatives. This is what we call critical thinking, and such thinking is what leads us to discovery. If it weren't for that then we would have never advanced from "curing" illness with leeches and whiskey.

The whole point of this journey for Kiro, as I interpret it, is to find out what works for him. He's questioning the different things he's heard and is considering alternatives.

Pretty much why I don't mind this thread going off topic. Discussions like these really get you thinking. What makes sense and what doesn't? Why would intermittent fasting even work since most traditional advice say otherwise? It's truly interesting.

Day 5
Weight: 177 lbs

Expected some fluctuation. Mostly due to waste and lack of sensitive scale resolution.

I plugged my info into a TDEE calculator just to get a rough estimate of what I should expect from a calorie counting perspective. Result is about 2500 calories. Say on my fasting days, I run a deficit of 2000 calories. By the end of this week, with four fasting days, that is an 8000 calorie deficit, or about 2lbs. Let's see if this works.

This week, I did no exercise at all, though that's more out of laziness than anything. However, I'm going to use it as a reference and compare it to next week when I introduce exercise on my eating days. The following week is Katsucon so I can't really use that week, but the week after, I'll try introducing exercise on my fasting days.

A one week trial period each is not going to net any significant or definitive results, but it'll be for exploration purposes to see not so much the results, but how I feel during that week and see which method I believe works best for me that I can keep up until I reach my goals.

Edit:

Day 6
Experienced pretty bad diarrhea yesterday into today. After some research, it could be due to the food selection post-fast. Not sure if it's related to the fast or not, so I won't be changing anything yet.

Due to inconsistency, I was unable to obtain a valid weigh-in for today. However, at 9am and nude after some time on the toilet, I weighed 173 lbs. This will definitely go back up as I replenish my water. Today is a regular eating day.

Edit 2:

Day 7
Weight: 177 lbs

Ate a bit more than I wanted to for dinner last night, but in terms of calories, it was probably fine.

I've decided to modify my routine a bit. It's still ADF in a way, but rather than stay true to every other day, I think it's better for me to make certain days of the week a fasting or regular day rather than have them alternate. So, my fasting days will be Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Exception is tomorrow since I'm celebrating an early Chinese New Year's with family.

Edit 3:

Day 8
Nude at 10am, I weighed 175 lbs. My t-shirt and sweat pants probably don't weigh more than 1 lb, so I'm going to say that this week has been successful.

Edit 4:

Turns out that ADF is a bit too hard for me to keep up with. Maybe 5:2 will work better.